Paula Abdul "The Promise Of A New Day (Cassette Single & Video, USA, Virgin America, 4-98752)"

"The Promise of a New Day" is a song by American singer and entertainer Paula Abdul, recorded for her second studio album Spellbound (1991) and services as the album's opening track. The track, written by Abdul, Peter Lord, Sandra St. Victor, and V. Jeffrey Smith and produced by Lord and Smith, was released as the album's second official single in July 1991 in the United States. The song lyrically finds the singer singing optimistically about a relationship, with a vague sub-context of improvement of the world. It was also her first single released under her own label, Captive Records.

Despite mixed critical reception, "The Promise of a New Day" became another hit single for Abdul. It topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in September 1991, becoming Abdul's sixth and final number-one song as of 2025. Internationally, the track entered the top 10 in Canada, the top 20 in Finland, and the top 40 in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden.

In an interview with Songfacts, when asked how the song came to be, co-writer Peter Lord said, "Paula had an idea for the title and feel for the song and we built it from there."

The video was directed by Big TV!, a duo made up of Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom and of which would be the first of multiple times of Abdul working with them. The live waterfall and tropical footage were filmed on location in Hawaii, but Abdul was unable to attend filming due to prior commitments. Filming and production took place on July 8, 1991, in which Abdul and a number of background dancers filmed on a sound stage in Los Angeles, in which it would be edited in the video through green screen. The video would be released on August 17, 1991 on MTV as an exclusive, where it was shortly placed on heavy rotation.

The video attracted controversy due to the fact that special lenses were used to film the video. This method was in order so that editors could fit in more dancers but unintentionally made Abdul taller and a lot more thinner than what she actually was. The video was later mocked on In Living Color, where it was parodied as "Promise of a Thin Me" and took jabs at Abdul's singing voice and also fat-shamed her.

Tracklist:

Side A

1. The Promise Of A New Day (7" Edit)
2. The Promise Of A New Day (West Coast 12")

Side B

1. The Promise Of A New Day (7" Edit)
2. The Promise Of A New Day (West Coast 12")

All tracks appear on both sides.